Even if the Salvation Army Thrift Store sold used mattresses, a better place for the “donation” to its Smiths Falls outlet Sunday would have been an incinerator. And whoever used that mattress last should still be soaking in bleach.

It was that disgusting. When resident Dave Pringle, a former social worker, spotted a young couple in a shiny new van dumping the filthy, ripped mattress in the drop-off area, he gave the two a piece of his mind.

It’s just a mattress, they responded. What’s the big deal?

“They could have cared less,” says Pringle, well aware that much of the stuff dropped off on Sundays and after hours ends up costing the charity to have it hauled away to the dump.

As it turns out, Salvation Army stores throughout the Ottawa area are regularly used as dumping grounds for junk and even household waste. Tania Castonguay, manager of the Smiths Falls store, says bags containing kitchen garbage, cat litter and even tampons have turned up in donation bins. “It blows your mind,” says Castonguay.

Perfectly good clothing in one bin had to be discarded after liquid from rotting chicken breasts leaked out of a bag, she says. Sex toys, porn magazines, dirty or broken kitchen appliances, a cracked toilet and construction waste such as hunks of concrete have also been dropped off outside Castonguay’s store.

Perth’s Thrift Store also gets its share, usually after business hours. But at the Thrift Store’s new location in Kemptville, video monitoring and signs warning of fines for dumping seem to have done the trick, says supervisor Bianca Overdulve.

Though the Sally Ann prefers that donations, especially larger items such as furniture, are brought to its stores during business hours so staff can determine whether the goods are salable, those intending to dump know the trick. “A lot of dumping goes on when (shops are) not open,” says Ottawa Salvation Army spokesman Sean Maddox. “When we have staff on site … we’ll tell people we can’t accept that. But on weekends, after hours, people dump.”

So somebody else’s garbage becomes the Sally Ann’s, which pays dearly to have the unwanted articles and trash hauled away. In Ottawa, where the Salvation Army’s dozen or so stores brought in $10 million in sales over the last year, Maddox says about two per cent of that money — approximately $200,000 — was spent in dump fees. That’s $200,000 less for the organization’s programs that assist the needy.

People who dump, says Castonguay, “are taking money from the people we are trying to help … you’re not helping the community at all.”

Former social worker Dave Pringle said he confronted the couple that dumped this mattress at a Salvation Army Thrift Shop. Their response? It’s just a mattress.

Dumping an old mattress, a table with three legs or a bag of filthy old clothes on the Sally Ann might only be perceived as thoughtless. But in some of the Ottawa area’s smaller communities where municipal garbage collection fees are charged, it looks more like a way for households to save some money.

In Smiths Falls, there’s a $3 fee for every item over two garbage bags. Another bag of garbage and say, an old mattress, will cost $6 to be collected. Extra items are tagged as proof of payment. In North Grenville, residents are charged $1.75 per bag. Old furniture and appliances destined for the dump are subject to charges based on weight — $140 a ton, with a minimum fee of $10.

Even recycling rules may be encouraging households to dump what can’t be placed in blue or black boxes. Says Maddox: “We have a lot of issues with oil-based paints, old tires, fire extinguishers, light bulbs — you can’t put it in the garbage, so people off-load it in our donation bins.”

The charity doesn’t want to appear critical of well-meaning donors. “Something that has got the Salvation Army in a little trouble in the past is the interpretation of junk,” says Maddox, adding: “We don’t want to discourage people, but we want to them to just think: ‘Does this item have potential value to a new owner?'”

The larger issue, however, is the items that donors know shouldn’t be donated.

“The ultimate aim is to get the donor to appreciate what they are donating should be of value to another owner … rather than filtering stuff through us and having the Salvation Army incur garbage removal costs.

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